[sdiy] Chaotic/lo-fi patching techniques

[Eric Brombaugh]

Peter Keller wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 01:00:04PM -0700, Ben Lincoln wrote:
>> That's a pretty cool idea. Could you do something similar using ferrofluid
>> (so that the shape of the fluid could be magnetically controlled as well
>> as vibrationally), or would the electromagnets and whatnot cause too much
>> interference?
> 
> I see... You'd place magnets on the surface of the board, which would pull
> the ferrofluid up to the nails for contact. This method would produce
> probably very stable "patches", meaning you place the various magnets
> around the 2D board and each would pull up the fluid to it (and have some
> sticky-ball like behaviour when the magnets are close to each other).

For a more integrated approach, how about using one of these:

http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CAD8113%2C00.html

AD8113 16x16 crosspoint switch with a SPI input for controlling the 
selections. Just hook up your favorite microcontroller to randomly 
generate switch configurations. Main downside is that you can't drive 
one output with multiple inputs - it's a 1:1 hookup only. Might not be 
quite as whacky as what randomly shorting outputs together will do...

Eric